W hen famed Mississippi plaintiff lawyer Dickie Scruggs confessed to trying to bribe a state magistrate, he threw himself at the mercy of the federal court, generated hundreds of letters from supporters talking about what a great humanitarian he was, and asked for a sentence of not more than two years.
In response, U.S. District Judge Neal Biggers gave Scruggs five years in the slammer, the maximum possible under the plea deal federal prosecutors signed with the celebrity lawyer. Biggers also ordered Scruggs to pay a $250,000 fine, plus the cost to taxpayers of his imprisonment. Sidney Backstrom, a law firm colleague of Scruggs, also pleaded guilty in the same bribery case and was sentenced to 28 months in prison and ordered to pay a $250,000 fine.
Biggers’ ruling brought to an ignominious end the career of a plaintiff lawyer who struck it rich in the 1980s and 1990s with highly publicized class-action lawsuits against Big Tobacco, Big Pharma and Big Insurance, among many others. His firm received nearly $900 million of the $8 billion in legal fees awarded in the litigation he led on behalf of numerous state governments against the tobacco industry. Hollywood even made a movie — “The Insider” starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe — based on Scruggs’ landmark 1998 tobacco case. But the celebrity status of a decade ago is no more, as Scruggs told the court at his sentencing that he “cannot be more ashamed” and called his actions a “scar and a stain” on his soul.
But it’s not just the soul of one corrupt Mississippi lawyer that has been devastatingly injured. The entire U.S. judicial system has been harmed by the out-of-control class-action plaintiff lawyers brought to justice in recent years. Earlier this year, Mel Weiss became the fourth former senior partner of the Milberg Weiss class-action securities law firm to plead guilty to participating in a conspiracy that paid more than $11 million in bribes to plaintiffs in more than 165 cases that generated in excess of $250 million in tainted legal fees, beginning in 1979 and continuing even after the government’s investigation of the scheme became known.
Lisa Rickard, president of the Institute for Legal Reform, says the convictions point to “a culture of greed and corruption that seems to be growing within the plaintiffs’ trial bar. Congress must investigate this scandal so that our civil justice system returns to aiding people who have been wronged, not helping wealthy trial lawyers become wealthier.”
How much longer must the public wait?
